Category Archives: Rants

As anyone who regularly reads this blog knows (or anyone who just knows me in person), I am a firm believer in the “treat walking as you would treat driving” philosophy. In other words, treat sidewalks like two-way streets, don’t weave around like a moron, and actually pay attention to where other people are before you dart out in front of them like a confused horse wearing blinders.

But apparently I’m the only human being in this city who thinks that way.

Example: there is a C-Train station right at the edge of campus, and it’s connected to a walkway bridge that goes over the highway. In other words, in order to get from the station to campus (or vice-versa), you need to use a set of stairs.

And because this is usually a pretty busy station due to its proximity to campus, the people who designed the stairs made it so that there were actually two sets of stairs to accommodate the crowds. Picture:

Let’s represent the flow of people going from campus to the C-Train in red, and let’s represent the flow of people going from the C-train to campus in blue. Am I insane for thinking that this is the best way that people should arrange themselves?

Just…just stay to the right. That makes sense to me. Pretend you’re a car! This seems like it would flow nicely.

But do people do this? No. Here’s how people actually use these stairs.

Here’s a fun list of things that bug the ever-loving poop out of me.
Because I’m in a BAD MOOD and HATE APRIL FOOL’S DAY more than anybody rationally should and I need to RANT.

So here goes the list.

April Fool’s day.

People with a story the length of War and Peace who decide the best medium to use to tell such a story is Twitter. Yup, 800 140-character “not at all coherent on its own and hardly even coherent when read with the other freaking tweets” segments. That’s exactly how I want to read the thrilling tale of how Starbucks permanently scarred you by misspelling your name on your cup.

People who take the elevator to go down one floor. I get it if you have some sort of impairment that makes walking down stairs tough, but I see this way more frequently than the likelihood of such impairments would suggest.

The whole “yoga pants as everyday pants” thing. I didn’t see this as much when I was in Moscow, but up here, especially at U of C, it’s a very popular style. Comfort’s great, yeah, but seriously…it makes you look like you just rolled out of bed and threw on the first thing that was on the floor by the hamper. I’m the last person to be judging others’ fashion choices, but hey, I’m going to do it.

This is mostly on Tumblr/online in general, but I’m irrationally annoyed by the popularity of people announcing how tired they are. “I’m 104% tired.” “I feel like I’m already tired tomorrow.” So what do you want, a medal? If you’re honestly that tired, maybe try changing your lifestyle in some way?

All these remakes/sequels/live-action interpretations of 80’s and 90’s TV shows and movies. Yes, Millennials are the nostalgia generation in the sense that we have a very strong connection to the media of our childhoods. But do we really have to rehash every damn thing from Beauty and the Beast to The Powerpuff Girls to (edited to add) The Dark Crystal? And what’s worse, do we really have to be so dumb as to throw enough of our money at such a blatant attempt to profit off our nostalgia to the degree that we encourage the making of more of these atrocities?

Sequels in general. They don’t work, they’re not worth it. 95% of the time they fail at living up to the original (exceptions in my opinion: the Toy Storys, the Iron Mans, Home Alone 2).

The words “doggo” and “pupper.” They just bug me.

The expectation of now that Nate and I are married, we’re going to start pooping out kids. “So when are you going to start a family?” Um, we already are a family, you rude bag of antiquated societal spew, thanks for asking.

All the pedestrian-related stuff that I’m TOO ANGRY TO EVEN MENTION BECAUSE I THINK IT WOULD GIVE ME A BRAIN ANEURYSM.

That’s fine! You’re completely allowed to have opinions about a game. But as soon as you start hating the players of said game? You probably need to chill.

Context: I have a surprising number of conservative, older friends on Facebook. They’re mostly teachers from high school and whatnot. A few of them post a lot of racist, bigoted garbage that I try to just ignore (at least, I did before just hiding their posts, haha).

Anyway, tonight after sending approximately 8,000 Pidgeys to the professor, I got the wonderful idea to see what these incredibly enlightened friends of mine thought of Pokemon Go. Was it the work of the devil? The work of Obama? The work of Muslims? THE WORK OF DEVIL MUSLIM OBAMA?!?!?!?! I checked out their pages, and yeah, pretty much:

LOL @ “mancard.” Seriously?

Let me ‘splain a thing. There’s a path alongside the Bow River here called the RiverWalk. It’s a path dedicated to cyclists/walkers/rollerbladers/skateborders/etc. so they can hang out by the river without fear of getting mowed over by crazy drivers. Usually there’s a decent amount of people out there, but I’ve never seen as many people out there as there were today.

Why where there so many people out there? Two words: Pokemon Go.

Seriously. There were SO MANY people out wandering around. People were out on their own, people were out with their significant others, people were out with groups of friends.

Does it matter that most of them had their heads down, looking at their phones, for most of the time?
Does it matter that they were busy hunting Pidgeys and Zubats and whatnot rather than, say, having a picnic or reading a book in the shade?
Does it matter that it took a game on a phone to bring these people outside?

No.

What matters is that people were outside having fun. People were walking around on paths they may not have ever used in order to find Pokemon or use Pokestops. People were sitting in the shade, camping Pokestops, talking with their friends about which teams they were on and what their strongest Pokemon were. People were having fun. People were enjoying the outdoors. It shouldn’t matter why.

That’s what pisses me off about people saying “ZOMG POKEMON GO IS THE DEVIL THOSE STUPID MILLENNIALS ARE GLUED TO THEIR PHONES WHY IS THIS EVEN POPULAR I HATE POKEMON GO AND AM THUS VASTLY SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY”

Okay. Point one? People were glued to their phones before Pokemon Go. You know they were. You can’t deny it.

Point two? Niantic created something that relies heavily on nostalgia for a huge demographic. Surprise! It’s popular! And why on earth is that a bad thing? I reiterate: people are having fun with it. Let. People. Have. Their. Fun.

Point three: how pathetic do you have to be to complain about the popularity of something you dislike? If you hate it, don’t waste your energy berating it to the point that you’re insulting the people whose opinions don’t match yours. So you hate Pokemon Go. Cool, good for you. Don’t play it. But stop being a whiny bag of week-old piss and let the people who enjoy it just enjoy it.

Okay, I know I did a blog post on emojis not too long ago, but holy hell. Now I have a smart phone and I can see the insanity firsthand.

I mean, I get it. Some of these are actually useful and/or sensible. Like the regular smileys. I use regular smileys over Skype and Facebook and whatnot to indicate sarcasm, mood, good-natured jesting, whatever.

But then it gets weird.

It’s an eye. One eye. It’s not even a “generic cartoon round shape” eye. It’s shaped kind of like a normal eye. But there’s just one. Why?

I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE POOP WHY IS THE POOP A THING

A pager, a fax machine, a floppy disk, and a VHS tape. ‘Cause LOL 90’s, right?

I don’t even know what this is. What the hell is this?

Yup. Them’s shapes.

I think this last page is Android saying, “we don’t know what the hell category to put this stuff in, so here are drugs, a gun, an Easter Island head, and a toxic barrel, you goddamn Millennials.”

WHY DO YOU NEED ANY OF THESE IN PICTURE FORM. Why would I ever want to text message someone the high density polyethylene plastic recycling symbol? Why would I ever want to text someone die faces? Or chess pieces?

Lists like this are dumb. Hell, I’m guilty of like 80% of these. Let’s rant.

1. Dressing for the weather.When it’s -14 outside, I wear what’s practically a windbreaker and those tiny little thin gloves. Everyone else I see, including the dudes (SHOCKING!) are wearing appropriate clothing. So yeah.

2. Taking up the appropriate amount of space.
At least the author didn’t use the word “manspreading.” I like how manspreading gets all this hype about it, but nothing is said about the women who go on public transit with 3+ shopping/grocery bags and then just dump said bags into the seat next to them. How is that any better than a dude splaying his legs? I do the leg splay thing too, anyway, if I’m on the bus after a long walk. Only if it’s not crowded, though.

3.Taking care of themselves when they’re sick.
Nobody is good at taking care of themselves when they’re sick. Nobody. That’s why it sucks so hard. Story time: back in 2014 I got sick with what I’m assuming was some sort of Black Plague variant, ‘cause it completely knocked me for a loop (for those of you who don’t know: I very, very rarely get sick, but when I do, I feel like complete death). This was before I knew Nate, so I was basically on my own in my little basement apartment, trying not to die. I NEEDED medicine ‘cause my fever was approaching 104 and I was having trouble breathing because of the blood that was filling my lungs (exaggerating…or AM I?!), but the closest anything that sold anything of the sort was the Safeway a mile away. Let me tell you, man, I could BARELY make it to that Safeway. I thought my insides were going to catch fire, they hurt so bad. I almost had to ask some random person in Safeway if they would please drive me home, ‘cause I didn’t think I would make it the mile back. I did, I took meds, and was eventually fine, but seriously. Taking care of yourself when you’re sick is awful and no one is good at it.

4. Packing for trips.
Every guy I’ve ever known has been better than me at packing for trips. I take like 7 hours to get what I need ready and organized and packed. My guy friends grab their crap, chuck it into suitcases/backpacks, and are ready to go in like half an hour. And they never seem to forget anything, either.

5. Speaking at a volume that suits their current space.
You mean kids, not adult guys, right? Kids never speak at the appropriate volume. Adult guys do. F-.

6. Doing laundry in a way that doesn’t ruin at least one clothing item.
HAHA I GET IT IT’S A “WOMAN’S CHORE” SO GUYS SUCK AT IT AM I RIGHT?? Even if this were true for a dude (or a lady), I would suspect the growing pile of ruined clothes would prompt him (or her) to figure out how to freaking do laundry correctly.

7. Deciding when it’s time to get a haircut.*old man voice* “I haven’t gotten a haircut since Truman was president and I’ll be dead and buried before these young whipper-snappers force me into a barber’s chair!”

8. Drying off after a shower.THOG BIG MAMMOTH MAN! THOG CANNOT REACH BACK WITH TOWEL! THOG DO MANLY NAKED SPRINT THROUGH TOWN TO DRY OFF INSTEAD!

10. Sleeping in a position that doesn’t cause snoring.Who can freaking control how they sleep once they’re asleep? I certainly can’t. I mean, I can fall asleep curled up on my side, say, but when I wake up I’m sprawled out on my back taking up the whole bed.

11. Waiting for their food to cool before they eat it.
THOG’S MOUTH ON FIRE, BUT THOG SO BAD AT COMMUNICATING HIS FEELINGS, HE CANNOT EXPRESS HIS DISTRESS AND PAIN!

12. Leaving the toilet seat up.Really? Really?

13. Wearing matching socks.Is this a serious issue for…anyone? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wearing non-matching socks, unless it was deliberate. And even if a person does wear mismatched socks, who freaking cares?

14. Wearing properly fitting pants.
OH GOD, NOT IMPROPERLY FITTING PANTS!! Have you seen the ill-fitting pants that women wear? Have you? Have you seen MY pants? Not a single freaking one of them fits me “properly.” I think dudes are better at finding decent-fitting pants than the ladies are, honestly.

15. Knowing what looks good on their body type.Wasn’t this covered in #14?

16. Being patient with someone who’s getting ready.My dad is not patient with others getting ready. But does that generalize to all dudes? Nope! Not unless you do the same with one of my female friends, who can’t stand waiting for others.

17. Mansplaining.I hate this word and I hate your face.

18. Zoning out when anything sports related is happening in the vicinity.Goddamn home-wrecking sportsball, man. Does the zoning out include them zoning out on the sports as well? Like, if they suddenly flip to a football game on TV, do they just go into a fugue? That would actually be kind of hilarious. “THE PACKERS GAME IS ON THE RADIO; TURN IT OFF OR ELSE GARY’S GONNA DRIVE US INTO THE GRAND CANYON!”

19. Closing the shower curtain after a shower.What? This is a thing that needs to be done? Shoot, I don’t do this either.

20. Empathizing about periods/childbirth.I think they do the best they can, considering most guys never experience these things. It’s hard to empathize with something you can’t experience. When my mom is gagging from the smell of a skunk, for example, I can’t really empathize with that. I have no idea what that’s like, and I never will. So yeah.

21. Knowing when to stop talking.Apparently the author of this article has the same problem!

I mean, emoticons were one thing. They were born in the soulless era of early internet and thus are blameless, holy creatures that are not to be shunned simply because humans, as a species, didn’t quite know how to “internet” back then.

Like, I get the point of some of the smileys if they’re use to denote tone or something like that. But what’s the point of some of the other ones? WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE POOP ONE?

Emojis almost as bad as excessive hashtags.Almost as bad as excessive hashtags.

Edit:what in the everlasting hell. What are they going to do, have the little faces bounce around for an hour and a half with the same freaking expressions? I get that every time I check my damn Facebook. Why do these godawful things need a movie?

Not the buttons/signs themselves, but the fact that like 98% of people are too stupid to understand how they work. Do you see the arrow on that sign? If you want to cross in that direction, you press the button. If not, don’t press the damn button.

These signs are even easier to understand up here. They specifically say “Push button to cross [insert street here].” But do people understand that?

NO.
THEY MASH THE DAMN BUTTON NO MATTER WHAT.

This wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if it didn’t screw things up with my timing at crosswalks.

Scenario: There’s an intersection* of a fairly busy road (let’s call it A St.) and a slightly busy road (let’s call it B St.). The sign to cross B St. is always set to “walk” unless someone pushes the button to cross A St.
I’m walking down the sidewalk along A St., heading toward the intersection. I want to continue along the sidewalk where I am, so I just want to use that “always set to walk” sign. However, some dude comes up and presses the button to cross A St.

No big deal. He wanted to cross A St., so it’s legit.

But now, as he’s crossing, another dude walks up and wants to cross B St., like I do. But instead of being patient and just waiting for the A St. one to stop flashing, he PUSHES THE DAMN BUTTON TO CROSS A ST.
And what happens? He gets across B St. fine, but his pushing the A St. button screws up the timing and the B St. sign goes red again by the time I get there (because someone pressed the button!), forcing me to stop.

The thing that really pisses me off is when you’ve got some slow little fart in front of you who decides that he needs to walk RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF THE DAMN SIDEWALK and is completely oblivious (usually due to a phone) to everything around him.

Like, I’m making all sorts of noise behind the guy to warn him that he’s not the only one on the sidewalk and is certainly not one of the faster ones, and he’s just “duurrrrr smart phone.”

Then I end up finally having to walk off the side of the sidewalk to pass him, and he gives me the dirtiest little “how dare you” look.

Dude. Seriously. It’s not my fault you’re an idiot. MOVE TO THE SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK IF YOU’RE GOING TO WALK AT THE PACE OF A COMATOSE SNAIL.

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNGH.

This is how I feel when I go to pass these types of walkers.

(Yes, I made a .gif from that YouTube video. It’s pretty much my favorite video ever.)

I’m going to preface this with the acknowledgement that not everyone is physically capable of shoveling the snow from their sidewalk. I understand that completely. And I understand that not everyone can be outside and shoveling as soon as it snows (or even several hours after, in some cases). I get it.

But for those people who can shovel perfectly fine but just don’t?

I don’t know if you realize this or not, but those sidewalks are in front of your houses because some people don’t have cars and need to walk to get places. When you don’t shovel your sidewalk AT ALL, there’s going to be quite a bit of snow build-up. If there’s a slight increase in temperature you still don’t do anything about it, the temperature’s going to drop again and the snow will have turned to ice. And it’s going to stay there for quite some time, making life pretty miserable for us pedestrians.

I wish the city was somehow tougher on people who don’t shovel their sidewalks. If people had to clear the strip of street that was in front of their house, I’m sure there’d be immediate consequences if they left their part of the street unplowed. Seriously. I saw a guy in a wheelchair the other day who had to wheel out in the street for half a block because none of the sidewalks on that side had been cleared and were basically pure ice.

What the fuck is this
What in the fuck is thisWHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS

Google, you inconsistent pile of nonsense, what was wrong with your previous logo?

Hell, what was wrong with your previous font? Anybody who knows me knows how much I hate sans serif fonts.
(For anybody that doesn’t know me: it’s a lot.)

I don’t like that using a sans-serif is becoming the equivalent of being “modern.” It’s not being modern. It’s being shit. I think there’s a correlation between how long a site’s been using a sans-serif font as their logo (or as part of their logo) and how much that site sucks.

Let me give you some examples:

Twitter has always had a sans serif font, and Twitter has always sucked. And what’s with the “t” in this font? It looks like a little airplane seat.

An airplane seat for losers.

Facebook has always had a sans serif font, too. Coincidentally, Facebook has pretty much always sucked as well.

Now let’s look at some websites that don’t suck. Notice that they all use serif fonts.

HOLY SHIT IT’S A CONSPIRACY.

Nnnngh the sans serif nonsense is such an annoying fad. Like, I know Google has changed its logo in the past, but this is too dramatic, I think. Seriously, Google, you were doing fine with variations of this…

People who comment on the eating habits of others drive me up the freaking wall.

Like, it’s okay if you’re good friends with the someone and you’re both okay with the comments, but if you’re acquaintances/friends that aren’t too close/strangers, then it’s like…seriously?

Who even cares, anyway? What business is it of yours? So Person X eats more than you/less than you/rarely/frequently/constantly/late at night/only on odd days of the month/food you’d never touch with a 10-foot pole? Unless you’re legitimately concerned about their health (and even then it can be iffy), don’t comment on it. Because it doesn’t concern you.

Also, some people just don’t like talking about that kind of stuff, so if someone says to them, “why do you [some obnoxious comment about food habits]?” it might make them feel super awkward or embarrassed.

Apparently, iTunes has stopped offering its weekly free song. I know they’ve been doing that since at least 2006, but now they’ve just decided to stop.

What the hell?

Is it just me, or is that a super dumb move? I can, off the top of my head, name at least ten artists that have gotten a lot of good publicity by having a free song of theirs offered on iTunes. Remember when Sleepyhead was the freebie of the week? I can still remember the exact date I downloaded that song because it was such a good one. And I don’t know about other people, but I know that for me and for quite a few of my friends, that was our first exposure to Passion Pit and we’ve all become pretty big Passion Pit fans since.

I echo the Apple forum poster quoted in this article: “… the free single each week got me to the Store and I usually bought a few songs. Now, there’s less reason to go.”

I pretty much always wound up buying another song or two once I got my freebie, just because I was in the iTunes store and always ended up browsing the music. I can still browse now, of course, but that tantalizing allure of the freebie is gone and I probably won’t end up buying as much as I used to*.

This hurts my music soul. I have gotten some damn good songs from the iTunes weekly freebie thing:

I’m going to mention Sleepyhead again, ‘cause that song was my #1 most played for like five years straight.

Good move, iTunes. Good move.

*Okay, that’s a lie; I need to be able to complete my Decade of Music project, after all. So let’s just say I’ll be less motivated to browse and more likely to buy songs I’ve already heard elsewhere, like on YouTube and such.

Granted, it’s a subjective collection of greatest works/greatest minds, but notice the wide spread of ages in all categories.

This is important to me mainly because I’ve always heard (from various people/sources) that math, in particular, is “for the young” and that once you’re past a certain age (30 is commonly mentioned), learning math—let alone understanding it on an intuitive level—just doesn’t happen. And good luck trying to contribute something to the field if you’re 30+, right?

That idea’s just always bothered me. What does age have anything to do with your math ability (apart from, of course, possibly having more learning time in general if you start at an earlier age versus an older age)? I guess it may be true that the older you get, the harder it is to learn in general, but there’s no reason why that should translate to “you’re 30, so now suddenly the math part of your brain will never understand anything new and you will be of no use to the field, so get out and go study Brit lit or something!”

Hell, based on personal experience, I feel like I’m getting more from my “older” degrees (like math, which I got at age 26) than I did with my “younger” degrees (like psych and philosophy, ages 20 and 21 respectively). That of course may just be due to the fact that since I’ve been in school for SO LONG that my brain’s just kind of morphed into some super-efficient book-learning machine, but I think it’s more likely that seeing the processes and connections and “inner workings” of a lot of subjects and topics is just easier for me now that I’m a little older. I’m not sure if that’s the case for other people who seem unable to leave academia like myself (I keep trying, but it KEEPS DRAWING ME BACK IN), but it’s certainly true for me.

(Inspired by past experience, past observations, and the complaints of undergraduates from three—count ‘em, three—universities.)

On the first day of class, go over the syllabus, ask if there are any questions, and then launch right into the material. Omit any form of road map for the course or any reasoning as to why everyone from bio majors to engineering majors to political science majors are required to take the course.

Pick the driest, most boring textbook possible. Use it and it alone as supplemental material to your lecture notes.

Assume that all students, regardless of actual background or major, are familiar with such thing as summation notation, factorials, slopes, and calculus. That sociology major sitting in the middle row who’s struggling simply because they don’t know that 5! = 5*4*3*2*1? That’s their problem, not yours.

Make sure your class is all application, no theory. After all, why would people need to understand the reasoning behind the tests they’re using so long as they know how to do the tests?

If you cannot implement the above method, try making sure your class is all theory and no application. After all, if you teach the theory really well, odds are the students will be able to derive the practical applications by themselves, right?

Stick to the most boring examples you can think of, and make sure every example you use is coming from the same area of research. Do you have a background in business? Every example should be business-related and involve as many technical terms as you can throw in there. Same idea if your background is biology or psychology. That way, students can really see how statistics can be used in practically every field—as long as that field is yours.

There are plenty of cool, funny, and downright fascinating examples where statistics are used in unique and exciting ways. Make sure you keep these engaging examples out of the classroom.

If there is a topic that the majority of the class is struggling with, assume that it’s their own faults for not studying it well enough and press onward to new material. Breadth, not depth, right? Who cares if there’s a section people are struggling with as long as you cover every chapter in the textbook by the end of the semester.

Offer only one explanation of each topic. All students learn the same, and thus why waste time trying to explain a concept in two or more different ways? If there is confusion over your explanation as to why we use an ANOVA versus a bunch of paired t-tests for comparing 3+ means, it’s not your problem. Everyone should just be able to understand your explanation with no problem, so long as they’re applying themselves.

Finally, lecture in the most unenthusiastic voice possible. After all, you’re talking about numbers, right? Numbers are obviously inherently boring and this boringness should be conveyed through your lecturing style. If students are willing to learn, they should be able to get past your droning voice at 8:30 in the morning. Those who fall asleep simply are slackers.

All of the above info must already be very obvious, because so many statistics teachers seem to glean their teaching techniques from at least one or two of the above points.

After all, if we’re not making statistics the most painful subject to learn, we’re not doing our jobs right.

I was unaware that the term “pound sign” does not usually apply to the symbol “#” outside of the United States—hence my hesitation to use it in my title and confuse people even more than I already do. And I refuse to use the term “hashtag” because I’m too cool for school social media. Also, “hashtag” automatically reminds me of Twitter, and Twitter is my mortal enemy. Here are some things I dislike about Twitter:

If I only get 140 characters to express my thoughts, you’d best be expecting some snarky rebellion on my part, ‘cause 140 characters ain’t happening. I can’t even voice my dislike of the 140 character limit in 140 characters. I CAN HARDLY EVEN SAY “HELLO” IN 140 CHARACTERS, ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

“I’mma tweet this” is the most obnoxious phrase to enter the English language in the last 900 years.

When did we turn into birds, anyway?

When did we turn into birds that can only “tweet” the length of 140 characters? What if actual birds had this limitation? Imagine the bird version of Shakespeare (heh, “Bird Bard”) dealing with such a thing. Blasphemy.

Wait, DID BIRDS IMPOSE THIS LIMIT ON US? Is Twitter really some sort of avian takeover of the human race?

I’m picturing some sort of European Union: Bird Version type thing. “Alright guys, so we tried to give the humans our flu, but that didn’t take ‘em out like we’d hoped. So let’s set up this website—we’ll call it Twitter ‘cause that’s cute and they’re dumb—and give ‘em 140 characters to blather on about their day or their underwear or whatever it is they talk about when we’re not around. Soon their language will devolve into nonsensical 140-character pseudo sentences, which will shortly be taken over by hashtags. THEN WE WILL RISE, BRETHREN, AND TAKE OVER THE SKIES!” #birduprising2015

The thing that really gets me is when people want to tweet something that’s more than 140 characters, so they just break it up into like 9 separate tweets, each of which is hardly a coherent sentence on its own. Really? Get a blog, long-winded bro! There’s no character limit on a blog! And blogging’s easy, see? Even I can do it!

The 140-character thing is really what I’m stuck on. SERIOUSLY.

Can you imagine someone like Descartes trying to use Twitter?

(I just spent five minutes not only looking for a “fake tweet generator” but also finding the smallest pic of Descartes to center in that little box. Good lord.)

#You #don’t #need #these #buggers #on #every #freaking #word

I…I just don’t get the appeal, to be honest. If I like someone enough to want to read their thoughts/opinions, I’d probably want to read more than 140-character snippets. Just sayin’.

(Here’s where I turn into Hypocrite Central and admit with downcast eyes that I do, in fact, have a Twitter account that does, in fact, have more than 0 tweets. DON’T YOU GO SEARCHING FOR IT OR I’LL MAKE #birduprising2015 A THING, I SWEAR TO GOD.)

Wow, this blog took a serious turn into a Twitter rant, didn’t it? I can’t even remember what I was originally going to blog about.

Oops.

That happens sometimes.

(Also, something like a bagel might be more intuitively represented using spherical coordinates rather than Cartesian coordinates. Just sayin’.)

Alright, so one of the malls I walk to all the time is North Hill Centre. The reason I frequent this mall so much is because it’s in between UC and my apartment, meaning I can walk there from school, get grocery nonsense at Safeway, and walk home fairly easily.

To get to the mall form across the street, you have to go over this above-highway walkway thingy. Here’s Google Maps to help you visualize this:

(Do you like my super professional-looking labeling?)

Let’s zoom in on the mall parking lot, shall we?

Oh, what’s this yellow painted walkway? A corridor for pedestrians to get through the parking lot, perhaps?

So how come every time I go to that damn mall there’s at least one car parked in that yellow walkway?

Seriously. Do they really think that’s a special little parking spot for them? Do they not realize it’s a WALKWAY for LEGS??

It wouldn’t bother me so much if it wasn’t so hard to cross right there (okay, maybe it still would), but the way the other parking spots are arranged makes it hard for the cars to see you and you to see the cars. Heck, even when the walkway’s clear you basically have to step out into the lot to see if there are any cars coming. So why not add the obstacle of one or two drivers thinking that they’re super special and allowed to park in the shiny yellow spots?